


Notebooks

by thebisexualbanshee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Universe, Coda, Destiel - Freeform, Future Fic, M/M, One Shot, Post-Canon, Season/Series 13 Spoilers, season 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 16:24:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12868413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebisexualbanshee/pseuds/thebisexualbanshee
Summary: Death walks often through her large library of notebook-bound maybes, stacked in towering, meticulously ordered shelves. Every living human is represented here, organized first in order of birth—year, month, day, time down to the millisecond—then alphabetically, each name inscribed on a little silver plaque, affixed to the shelf in its corresponding time slot. And below each name a stack of notebooks, every one recording different, detailed iterations of ways the human might die.The stacks that live beneath the names of Sam and Dean Winchester are unending.





	Notebooks

Death walks often through her large library of notebook-bound _maybes_ , stacked in towering, meticulously ordered shelves. Every living human is represented here, organized first in order of birth—year, month, day, time down to the millisecond—then alphabetically, each name inscribed on a little silver plaque, affixed to the shelf in its corresponding time slot. And below each name a stack of notebooks, every one recording different, detailed iterations of ways the human might die. 

Most people have many of these notebooks, and even though she knows what they contain, Death likes to pull them at random and skim the pages. She’s never bothered by the fact that a person’s life is ending—Death, after all, is nothing to fear, as natural as being born. It’s the manner of the end that troubles her: violent ends, lonely ends, endings that could have been forestalled—which is why Death never chooses from new names with only one book. These, she knows, are those who were destined for impossibility; their names existing for a moment, then added to a litany of lost infants. Even Death, in these moments, knows sympathy; knows there’s a difference between dying and never being born.

She prefers it when she finds a book wherein the human dies quietly of old age, deeply cherished, surrounded by those who they love and are loved by. These souls, Death knows, are the ones who come to her gently, who greet her at the threshold of the veil as if finally arriving home from a long journey. She walks with them, arm in arm, to the door of the other side and ushers them softly into eternity. Death prefers this to the souls she must drag, kicking and screaming. But no matter the manner of the soul, she never tries to guess whether that door opens into Heaven or Hell.

Usually, the books begin to slowly vanish as the person on the other side grows older. With each choice they make, the possibility is changed; the path leading them to a particular notebook closes. Books are added periodically too, but this is less common. It happens to everyone once or twice: a new path opens and a notebook appears each time someone drives drunk, or goes skydiving, or takes some other risk—and if they live, the notebook vanishes again. Then there are the people whose stacks of notebooks multiply: people who choose more dangerous paths, like abusing drugs, or enlisting in the military in times of war. 

The notebooks that populate the many shelves of Sam and Dean Winchester are infinite. For every book that vanishes at least a dozen more appear. The Winchester brothers are the only humans listed in the library of the void who don’t follow Death’s strict organizational rules. It became clear, even as children, that they would not be contained. Before they were teenagers they needed their own wing. And, to Death’s frustration, her list system isn’t the only thing the Winchesters disrupt. 

When a human finally dies, their name and all the notebooks vanish—save one. That final notebook is spirited away to the library’s archives: a room filled to bursting with drawers instead of shelves. With each passing, a new drawer appears with the former person’s name. In the drawer is a novel and a notebook. The novel is a detailed account of that human’s life—how many breaths they took, how many times their heart beat, everything they ever did. In the notebook is written the version of death that, in the end, prevailed. Very few people have more than one; sometimes, people’s souls are sucked back into their bodies thanks to modern medicine. Those names reappear in the library, but keep their drawer, and the novel gets a little red tab—a flag to denote where time, for the human, restarts. 

In Sam Winchester’s drawer are seven notebooks. His novel has seven red tabs. Instead of a single drawer, Dean Winchester has a file cabinet. His drawers are stuffed with more than one hundred notebooks. His novel is bloody with flags.

**EPILOGUE**

On Earth, it’s been many years since Sam or Dean Winchester last earned a flag, but time moves differently in the void; to Death, it’s been no time at all. She walks ceaselessly through her library, guiding souls back and forth, reading stories of possible ends. 

She turns a corner in the 1979 W’s when she notices something strange: the wing that splits off from here, the one dedicated to the Winchesters, has suddenly halved in size. Sam Winchester’s shelves have been steadily growing spare—Death imagines he’s hunting less, letting himself grow old more peacefully. Dean Winchester’s shelves have disappeared entirely. 

Of course, this isn’t the first time it’s happened—it’s the 139th time, to be exact. Death hurries to the threshold of the void to wait for Dean’s arrival. Frustrating as he is, she can’t help but be entertained by their chats when his misfortune leads him, however briefly, here. She waits for what would have been three days on Earth, but Dean’s soul never comes. 

Death descends to the archives, quickly finding Dean’s file cabinet, locating the most recent drawer to appear, and wrenching it open to see how he’s cheated her this time. Furious, she snatches the notebook from behind the red-flagged novel and turns to the first page to read the summary. And as she reads, if it’s possible for Death to soften, she does.

NAME: DEAN WINCHESTER  
BIRTH: 24 JANUARY 1979  
DEATH: 17 SEPTEMBER 2067  
AGE: 88

SUMMARY:

_Dean Winchester died of old age in his sleep. The angel Castiel was with him, and upon his passing, with permission from God, collected his soul and took it directly to his Heaven, where Castiel has chosen to reside._

 

Death closes the notebook and tucks it away. Later, she’ll return to finish it. For now, she pulls Dean’s novel from the drawer, opens to page one, and with a smile begins to read.

**Author's Note:**

> ***This contains minor spoilers for Season 13***


End file.
